The Mother of All Fires

[Glacier]

The Baezaeko Fire absolutely exploded yesterday and overnight. It has combined with the Tautri and Chezacut fires, and thus is now the largest fire in BC history!

[Queen K]

Recorded history.

Who knows what's happened before we started putting fires out.

[youjustcomplain]

Recorded history.

Who knows what's happened before we started putting fires out.

Pretty safe to say that more of BC has burned in unrecorded history. That said, this is still quite significant. But, it sure was nice getting to see the sun yesterday. I went out and got a bit of a sun burn, just because I finally could !

[Scott17]

Glacier, where did you hear that they combined and are now the largest fire in BC history? I can't seem to find anything about that on the BC Wildfire website. From what I can see on there they are still several km's apart. Is there somewhere else that gives this info?

[Glacier]

Glacier, where did you hear that they combined and are now the largest fire in BC history? I can't seem to find anything about that on the BC Wildfire website. From what I can see on there they are still several km's apart. Is there somewhere else that gives this info?

I was going by the satellite data, but I'm the only one who has made this claim. It could be that they have not combined, though I think there's a fairly high probability that they have. Also, the map you've posted is woefully out of date. For example, the Wentworth and Tautri fires have combined but your map shows them as separate (the website even mentioned this early in the week). For some reason they are not keeping up with the mapping this year like they normally do.

Okay, so the largest fires (according the website) are:

1) Hanceville Riske Creek = 2,150 sq. km.
2) Baezaeko River = 1,819 sq. km.
3) Elephant Hill = 1,681 sq. km.
4) Tautri Lake = 1,248 sq. km.
5) Chezacut = 235 sq. km.

[Scott17]

It definitely seems possible that they have joined. I was curious so I did a geo-referenced overlay of the most up to date fire mapping with the newest MODIS remote sensing fire data to give a more in depth perspective of it. It looks like the two fires are about 3 km apart still but it's hard to tell, and there can be small issues with accuracy of remote sensing with such dense smoke cover, so who knows. One interesting thing to note from it is that the Tautri Fire and the Chezacut Fire have definitely joined up. If Bezaeko and Tautri haven't joined up yet I think it's safe to say that they eventually will and it will be a 350,000+ hectare fire.

[Frisk]

It does appear the quesnel west fires are quite close to joining together. Hanceville also appears to be traveling towards Tautri. As it stands right now they cover a combined area of over 600,000 hectares.

[Glacier]

Here are some good maps.

This one shows that the Kleena Kleene and Colwell Lake fires are close to merging.


This one shows that the Baezaeko River fire has not quite merged with the Chezacut fires or the Tautri fire, but the Arc Mountain fire (western one) has probably merged with the Chezacut fires, and the Chezacut fires are very close to merging with the Tautri fire to the east.



The Tautri fire is very close to the Baezaeko River fire, but still about 17 km from the Hanceville Riske Creek fire.



The Hanceville fire is at 215,000 hectares, so barring any more mergers, is the largest in the province.



And for good measure, here's the Elephant Hill fire.

[Scott17]

Those are great maps. It's nice that with the shading it shows the daily progression of the fires. It's amazing how many spots fires there appears to be in-between the main large fires.

[Glacier]

The Tautri-Baezaeko fire has been renamed the Plateau Fire. By FAR the largest fire in BC history.